Devolved jobs will kill this game.

[Hanzz96]

The 2-min meta IMO is mostly the result of purple/low orange players whining. Half the reason we're in this mess is because those purple players think it's the game's fault they can't get 99. Back in SB if you had the skill you can trivially get a 99 without any crit farming, without padding, in just a few pulls. People cry about how top players were all padded back then, but that's only valid for the top 10 or so. Plenty of people reach t20 with no padding, by just being a good player. And people who did not have the skill will never get a 99 no matter what. Back then basically everyone at the top are also consistently at the top, and even mega ultra padding only gets you to t20 if you're already a 97/98th percentile player. Well now, everyone can get a 99 by just crit farming. The most obvious symptom of this is that medians have dramatically fallen since SB. Back then top players pretty much all have 97-99 medians. Now it's like 90 lmao. What does that tell you? It tells you that damage now comes primarily from crit luck than from actual skill. It's an utterly pathetic state of affairs. Any ShB/EW/DT baby who thinks "optimizing" Savage/Ultimate content in 2026 is relevant is self-reporting on themselves, hard.

They should not be listening to the parse brigade for anything frankly. They unironically ruined the game. And not just the people crying in the FFLogs discord on how any particular fight's DPS should be calculated, but also the perverse mentality that started plaguing this game starting in late HW that the be-all-end-all of a good raider is their damage percentile.

Talks shit about people who like optimising damage and find enjoyment that way because "they ruined the game." Talks shit about low orange and purple parsers but doesn't share their own logs. Classic forum behaviour

[Hanzz96]

Buddy, in DT there's next to nothing to optimize other than farming crits in a parse party.

You can have the best crit in the world and still get grey if you're playing like ass.

[ForsakenRoe]

You can have the best crit in the world and still get grey if you're playing like ass.

I would assume that they're talking about 'multiple players who know what they're doing and are competing for good parses, and it's entirely down to who gets lucky with Crits/DHits because everyone's using the mathematically optimal rotation'

So, I think their point is more along the lines of... Let's take a Healer example

Back in SB, I remember watching Momo's video about how he and his cohealer got the Rank 1 parse on O12S. They still had Healing GCDs that cost damage in that parse, because reaching zero GCDs used was, at that point in the game's life, one of those 'aspirational goals' that you chase but never meet. The objective was never 'get to zero GCDs', but rather 'get as close to zero as possible'.

Nowadays, zero GCDs is attainable on a far more regular basis. You can reach the point where you are, in theory, perfectly optimal in your gameplay, because not a single GCD is wasted on Healing, and you're using your very-few DPS actions correctly (maintaining the DOT, using tertiary tools like Phlegma/Psyche/Assize optimally, etc). At that point, you have nothing left you can do for the optimization process, besides 'do the exact same thing again and again, but hope this time that an extra Phlegma happens to Crit/DH compared to last run'. In the past, you'd never reach zero GCDs, and so the optimization process never truly ended, because you'd still be looking to see, 'That run, we had to use 12 GCDs total between me and my cohealer and that's our best so far. Is there any way that we can get it down to 11?'

[Absurdity]

I would assume that they're talking about 'multiple players who know what they're doing and are competing for good parses, and it's entirely down to who gets lucky with Crits/DHits because everyone's using the mathematically optimal rotation'

So, I think their point is more along the lines of... Let's take a Healer example

Back in SB, I remember watching Momo's video about how he and his cohealer got the Rank 1 parse on O12S. They still had Healing GCDs that cost damage in that parse, because reaching zero GCDs used was, at that point in the game's life, one of those 'aspirational goals' that you chase but never meet. The objective was never 'get to zero GCDs', but rather 'get as close to zero as possible'.

Nowadays, zero GCDs is attainable on a far more regular basis. You can reach the point where you are, in theory, perfectly optimal in your gameplay, because not a single GCD is wasted on Healing, and you're using your very-few DPS actions correctly (maintaining the DOT, using tertiary tools like Phlegma/Psyche/Assize optimally, etc). At that point, you have nothing left you can do for the optimization process, besides 'do the exact same thing again and again, but hope this time that an extra Phlegma happens to Crit/DH compared to last run'. In the past, you'd never reach zero GCDs, and so the optimization process never truly ended, because you'd still be looking to see, 'That run, we had to use 12 GCDs total between me and my cohealer and that's our best so far. Is there any way that we can get it down to 11?'

Not just that the "optimal damage rotation" is regularly possible, but it's also incredibly simplistic compared to before.

Almost every job can run a perfectly looping rotation, so you basically have no natural drift you have to account for anymore, gauge usage and management has almost completely been reduced to "use on this one ability during burst", combos now last 30 seconds which is longer than most phase transitions so no need for GCD maniulation anymore either, not that you could do it even if you wanted to because the tools to manipulate what GCD you end up on before forced downtime have been removed.

And a bunch more changes that have simplified the "optimal" gameplay to a point where as soon as you reach like 90th percentile it becomes exponentially more about repeat runs for better RNG than actually playing well.

[Bru_Tus]

Talks shit about people who like optimising damage and find enjoyment that way because "they ruined the game." Talks shit about low orange and purple parsers but doesn't share their own logs. Classic forum behaviour

Well, you literally cannot share your own logs here unless you wanna get banned. It's not hard to look me up though. Starts with Sk and ends with os. Well-known on the forums (well, at least back in 2022-23). Rank 4 ASP on AST in Sigmascape (and unlike the rank 1 Lord of Crown troller I don't sacrifice my team's damage to roll Lord of Crown damage).

You can have the best crit in the world and still get grey if you're playing like ass.

So what? I'm not saying it takes zero skill to reach the top. I'm saying it's much more reliant on luck in 2026 than in 2018.

[Bru_Tus]

There is a certain base of players who have shown time and again they won't leave (source: Bancho). And I do not just mean high end enjoyers but also story enjoyers. Some people legitimately enjoy XIV jobs as they are. Some people like DT. As long as there is base that will tolerate anything and not back up their opinions with their wallet, you get gentle changes like Evolved mode and crap like DT. That's the cold truth. After all look what the exodus produced, the most massive QoL update in the game's history, meta nuked. Maybe if enough people left you could have seen bigger changes. That's partially why I find this hate train so funny bc if you stayed subbed this situation is quite possibly on you.

Well, its not on you but I can safely say I did my part to get them to try something, anything. Hence why hey, might as well see whwt they do. And as I keep saying if its all SMN copy pasta I am not sure how that will fly.

The thing that I've insisted for a long time is that a significant part of the playerbase literally don't care about jobs. These were the people never going into Cleric Stance in HW or never used Goad or Refresh in SB. I literally don't understand why we're even catering to these players considering they never cared in the first place? Now, they just fail to keep ABC and they're oblivious to what the correct way to play is. Whereas previously they were oblivious to Cleric Stance juggling. So if these people are not going to leave anyways, SE should man up and actually push the envelope.

[Valence]

A mediocre product? Are you referring to the game right now or evolved mode? Because as it stands right now, i'm happy with the game! It has issues, i'm not blind to them, but I love playing this game! I have faith in the development team that they're going to create something atleast interesting, and at most, a fun new combat system.

I'm asking why a player who DOES NOT trust the dev team as to why they should care about the game at all.
We'll see if any of this whining and complaining does any good by Berlin fanfest. Maybe they'll scrap evolved mode entirely to please people who assume it's going to be bad before they even get ahold of it themself.

I know this isn't targeted at me but I'll still give my own personal opinion if I may.

I do not trust the dev team when it comes to pve, because they've shown way more times than not that they can't be trusted if history is to be scrutinized. I could give them the benefit of the doubt here because for the first time in a decade their walls seem to have been shaken and they're finally trying to change things, which I do appreciate. But it's hard to get past the usual skepticism because of the way CBU3 has always worked: lukewarm, and uninterested into keeping their veterans.

So for now, I had faith when they finally showed they wanted to change things and was actually impressed with the keynotes, but what we were shown with the three evolved jobs they displayed really disheartened me and leaves me very worried. I do hope they can radically improve this because what we have been shown so far is really disastrous and no better than reborn mode. So if this doesn't prove successful, or too divisive, all they'll have achieved is alienating the community and turn players against each other, and in the worst case they'll have achieved nothing and on their typical fashion will just proceed to dial back into reborn like nothing happened for 9.0.

They just do not have a good track record, and for now the onus is on them to come up with something actually good, not on the playerbase.

It's not a good thought to entertain, at least for me.

I personally still do care about the game, even though I've almost stopped doing any kind of pve because of those issues. I do care about other things in the game (and no, I'm not referring to my ingame house), else I'd have probably unsubbed a while ago.

[Bru_Tus]

Is there any way that we can get it down to 11?'

Not just that, but there were a lot of quirks that people don't realize made the skill ceiling of healers far higher in HW/SB than they are now. On top of what you've said:

1) Some new players do not realize that none of the healers (except 4.3+ AST) had 1.5s cast times. All of them were 2.5s cast time turrets. SCH had an extremely high skill ceiling because on top of being a turret, for maximal damage they NEED to stay at melee range to use Miasma II for weaving. Furthermore, they CANNOT spam Miasma 2 for weaving, because M2 is an 12s DoT, so optimal usage consists of staggering your oGCDs and disengagement across M2 usages every 12s. M2 also had a rather high MP cost, so you have to plan your oGCDs to minimize your actual M2 usage too (since it burns your MP plus it's weaker than Broil).

2) Manual Embrace is technically an opti thing in SB. The most obvious usage is for popping Divine Veil on PLD, but because pets back then only healed up to IIRC 80% of someone's HP and SCH is most often paired with AST, you'd sometimes want to manual Embrace a high HP tank while all the DPS are low because a Star (which is much more powerful back then) is about to pop to maximize your healing efficiency.

3) There is an inherent tradeoff between Eos and Selene back then. Fey Wind boosts damage but also means you don't have Whispering Dawn or Illumination. I don't remember the exact math but it's not actually straightforward which pet to use on different fights.

4) Also, a lot of minor interactions that people all forget about these days that actually required coordination within the team. Stuff like a tank using Convalescence so you get a fat critlo.

Not just that the "optimal damage rotation" is regularly possible, but it's also incredibly simplistic compared to before.

Almost every job can run a perfectly looping rotation, so you basically have no natural drift you have to account for anymore, gauge usage and management has almost completely been reduced to "use on this one ability during burst", combos now last 30 seconds which is longer than most phase transitions so no need for GCD maniulation anymore either, not that you could do it even if you wanted to because the tools to manipulate what GCD you end up on before forced downtime have been removed.

And a bunch more changes that have simplified the "optimal" gameplay to a point where as soon as you reach like 90th percentile it becomes exponentially more about repeat runs for better RNG than actually playing well.

It's really sad because I personally jumped jobs to find something more interesting. I actually really enjoyed BLM and learned nonstandard lines back in early EW and even that is now gone. There's like nothing left that I find enjoyable after BLM was done.

[Burmecia]

no one must use evolved mode, reborn is right there and ready to go ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Hanzz96]

Not just that the "optimal damage rotation" is regularly possible, but it's also incredibly simplistic compared to before.

Almost every job can run a perfectly looping rotation, so you basically have no natural drift you have to account for anymore, gauge usage and management has almost completely been reduced to "use on this one ability during burst", combos now last 30 seconds which is longer than most phase transitions so no need for GCD maniulation anymore either, not that you could do it even if you wanted to because the tools to manipulate what GCD you end up on before forced downtime have been removed.

And a bunch more changes that have simplified the "optimal" gameplay to a point where as soon as you reach like 90th percentile it becomes exponentially more about repeat runs for better RNG than actually playing well.

Dancer. The combo isn't a perfect loop and burst is longer than 30 seconds with the 7 seconds needed for technical step/finish. You need to manipulate the GCD to go in combo neutral or that combo/proc will fall and cost damage. This cane be done though using last dance or saber but it does take gauge planning and manipulation and is a key skill of high level dancer.